Inner Solace

{021} Torc

Went to see the Extraordinary Stories exhibit from the British Museum at the WA Museum today.  This is one of my favourite pieces from the exhibit.

It’s a 1kg gold torc from a cache of several torcs (and a few coins) found buried in a field.  The lustre is from the mercury that was blended into the gold.

The torc is created from seven thin strands of hand rolled gold that have been wound together to form a rope. And several of those ropes were wound together to create the torc.  And did I mention each strand was hand rolled? Hand rolled to the exact same thickness and even end to end.  The rings at the end also have Celtic designs carved into them.

This work of art amazes me.  And it’s such a wonder as well because due to its intricacy, it would have had to have been worn by someone of high status. But we won’t be able to find out who they may have been, or why that cache was buried where it was. Extraordinary stories indeed.

disoriented:

mostexerent:

Take that THOU!

Okay, this is kind of awesome.

It really is. And was made more awesome when I accidentally misread flap-dragon and flax-wench and merged the two lines together to make flap-wench.

Take that you yeasty fen-sucked flap-wench[1].

[1] Ew.

★ discovered on imgfave.com (social image bookmarking) (via imgfavepopular, just-makesense)

The evolution of Nintendo’s game controllers.

(via voiceslikeyours)

fastcompany:

Infographic of the Day: 108 of the Best Haircuts in Music History

What’s pop music without crazy haircuts? Nothing, that’s what — and as iconic as the great pop stars are, you might be surprised at how iconic their hair is, all by itself.

Just check this new poster from Pop Chart Lab, which reproduces the haircuts of 108 inimitable pop stars. The truly uncanny thing is how many you can probably recognize without even looking at the name:

Weird, right? Of course, the poster has many, many omissions — I mean seriously, no Bieber? C’MON. But if you tweet new suggestions to @popchartlab and they use it in the next version of the poster, they’ll give you a $10 giftcard.

See the full chart when you click through.

(Source: fastcompany, via thedailyfeed)

Damascus Steel: Accidental nanotechnology circa 1100 A.D.! - Core77

Damascus Steel was used in the middle east between 1100-1700AD and it was “said to be able to cut through rocks and other people’s swords”.  Yikes.  The reason behind the superstrength of Damascus Steel apparently lies in carbon nanotubes.

Unfortunately, no-one knows how to replicate the method any more, and there is a suspicion that no-one knew how to do it consistently back in the day anyway.  Seems the smiths of the time just bulk forged steel and out of the all the weapons forged, only a few of the accidents made the final cut. So to speak.

Researchers and experimenters alike are yet to figure out how to reverse engineer this cool bit of old-school weapon forging badassery.